CNBC Halftime Report — A Critical Week for Stocks: Your Next Move

Apple hit a new record high (around $320). Joe Terranova is playing it as a "tactical trade" — buying it as it breaks out to new highs rather than as a forever-hold — and after a strong run he'll pause and add more only after the next earnings report. He calls it his "All Star of 2026." His favorite bullish signal is counter-intuitive: Wall Street analysts' average 12-month price target is only about $320 (right where it trades) and just 61% rate it a buy — meaning the pros are still skeptical, which leaves room for the stock to surprise them.

Sarat Sethi's angle is safety: unlike the other big tech names pouring cash into AI and running negative free cash flow, Apple still generates lots of cash, buys back its own stock, and is raising prices — "a safe ship in a spending storm." His view is that investors would rather hold a proven, low-drama compounder than chase the heavy AI spenders. (A side debate: Apple's new lawsuit against OpenAI — Lebenthal calls it routine legal housekeeping, not a sign Apple is scared, though the departure of design legend Jony Ive to OpenAI gives Terranova some pause.)

Nvidia makes the chips that train and run AI. The news here is that Stephanie Link bought it for the first time ever, because the price finally got cheap enough: about 18 times next year's expected earnings, while the company is still growing sales roughly 80% a year at fat (mid-70s%) profit margins, with free cash flow set to double. She notes it controls about 97% of the market for AI chips and has software that's very hard for rivals to copy.

Her clincher: on valuation it's the cheapest it's been since 2019, and it's badly out of favor even though it has quietly stopped falling and "found its footing." Joe Terranova frames the same thing in trading terms — after going sideways for months, buyers are stepping back in (a "return to accumulation"). Link plans to keep buying it on ugly down days.

Among the big tech companies spending heavily on AI, Stephanie Link thinks Amazon is the best positioned — it has multiple strong engines (advertising, cloud computing/AWS, and retail) rather than one, and the stock's valuation "makes a lot of sense." She added to it and says it's the hyperscaler she'd keep buying, explicitly preferring it over Meta (which she's holding but not adding to). In short: more ways to win and a more reasonable price than its mega-cap peers.

Micron makes memory chips that AI servers need in bulk. Jim Lebenthal has been buying it over the past three weeks (now about 3% of his portfolio) and shrugged off its ~5% drop on the day — his whole point is "stick to your style" and don't panic over daily swings. His fundamental hook: the anniversary of the "Chips Act" is approaching, after which Micron can start returning cash to shareholders (buybacks/dividends) — a concrete catalyst he likes to wait for.

He thinks Micron does "fine over the intermediate to long term" and is watching Taiwan Semiconductor's earnings at the end of the week as the first real read on how the whole chip sector is doing.

Marvell makes custom AI and networking chips. Stephanie Link owns it and has been trimming (selling a bit) into its big run to lock in gains, but "still like it very much" — it's part of her deliberate "barbell" of holding both chip stocks and software. It fell almost 8% on the day because the hawkish Fed news hit the fast-growing, high-valuation chip names (so-called "long-duration" assets) the hardest.

Broadcom makes networking chips and custom AI silicon for the big cloud companies. Stephanie Link's one-liner is that it has "$20 in earnings power" — i.e. she thinks its earnings can reach a level that makes today's price look cheap — so it's one of the chip names she likes to own alongside NVIDIA and Marvell.

Joe Terranova added to JPMorgan over the last month as one of the obvious ways to play the bank-earnings season. His one caveat: expectations for the big "money-center" banks swung from low to high in just 30 days, so he's being selective rather than buying the whole group indiscriminately.

Cboe runs options and futures exchanges — it makes money on trading volume rather than lending. Joe Terranova added it over the last month; he's especially comfortable "in the financial exchanges," where he sees less of the stretched-expectations risk he worries about in the traditional banks.

American Express is the credit-card company that skews toward wealthier customers. Joe Terranova owns it and likes that it has slightly lagged the sector — meaning expectations aren't stretched — while the affluent consumer keeps spending in a strong economy, so it "continues to work." It was upgraded by JPMorgan analysts today.

Capital One is a consumer-lending bank that recently absorbed Discover. Stephanie Link's highest-conviction bank pick (and her final trade): it trades at just 7.5 times earnings, is down about 17% on the year, and — her key point — the market isn't giving it credit for roughly $2.6 billion in cost savings ("synergies") coming from the Discover deal. "Really too cheap." Analysts at HSBC upgraded it to buy today, saying the underperformance looks overdone.

Wells Fargo used to be Stephanie Link's largest position; she sold out after two disappointing quarters but it's now "back on my radar." The turn she's watching: net interest income (the profit banks make on lending, "NII") is probably bottoming this quarter, and regulators lifting the cap on how big Wells can grow its balance sheet (the "asset cap") is a "very big deal" that should drive much better growth. The stock is down ~6% on the year and has lagged — so if it delivers in tomorrow's report, she finds it interesting.

Morgan Stanley is a big investment bank with a large wealth-management arm. Sarat Sethi made it his final-trade pick, and the catalyst he's watching is that wealth-management business. Stephanie Link separately names it (with Goldman Sachs) as one of the "obvious plays" on a recovery in capital-markets activity — deal-making and trading — as bank earnings begin.

BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, and its fees rise with the value of the assets it manages. Jim Lebenthal's final trade: because financial-market prices climbed in the second quarter, the assets BlackRock oversees are worth more, which should flow straight through to higher earnings when it reports (this Wednesday).

Ferrari, the luxury sports-car maker, is down double digits this year after a stumble with its electric-vehicle plans. Sarat Sethi bought it anyway, because the core business is exceptional: demand so far outstrips supply that it's effectively "sold out for two more years." He sees the price weakness as the opportunity to own a high-quality brand that will "do really well going forward."

Stryker makes medical devices and is a leader in surgical robotics. Sarat Sethi bought it — funding the purchase by selling rival Zimmer Biomet — because he sees Stryker as the higher-quality company with much better management. He's using a current cybersecurity problem at Stryker as the dip to buy into a business he rates highly.

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Jim Lebenthal counts it among the mega caps now trading in "value territory" (cheap). But Stephanie Link — who owns it — is deliberately not adding: it's "a bit frustrating," and while she agrees it's cheap, she needs to see Meta actually make money from its AI spending before the stock takes off. The spending keeps climbing (a rumored jump from $200 billion to $250 billion), which is why she'd rather add to Amazon. She won't sell, but she won't buy more — hence a hold.

A Wells Fargo analyst argued Disney should exit streaming and refocus on producing content, theme parks and franchises — a bold call that (despite cutting the price target to $125 from $146) claims up to 40% upside. The committee, which owns the stock, is split and frustrated. Jim Lebenthal thinks streaming is now a "crown jewel" (it went from losing money to earning ~$2 billion a year), and blames the stagnant stock on geopolitics, theme-park prices getting too high, and weak movie releases — though host Scott Wapner pushes back hard (Marriott and airlines are doing fine, so why not Disney?).

Joe Terranova, who bought in around $103 and isn't happy, says Disney has an "identity crisis" and a worse balance sheet than five years ago, with shareholder activism the only thing that's ever moved the stock. Sarat Sethi sees cash-rich assets that aren't being used well and wants a catalyst — possibly a merger. Both note ESPN is under-leveraged. Net: a frustrated hold waiting for a catalyst.

Oracle sells business software and, increasingly, cloud computing for AI. The stock just hit a new 52-week low. Sarat Sethi owns it: he sold about half after last year's big pop and is holding the rest, still believing Oracle can complete its transition into a cloud powerhouse — but the market is giving it "no credit" while it spends heavily to get there, like the other big AI spenders. It's painful, but he's holding.

Jim Lebenthal offers a technical reason for the recent slide: a flood of huge corporate bond sales (from Amazon and SpaceX, among others) is more than the debt market can easily absorb, pushing borrowing costs up across the board. Because Oracle has borrowed heavily to build its data centers, it gets caught in that "indigestion."